OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI WATCH: The New York Times has an article ("Historical Discovery? Well, Yes and No") which explicitly corrects some of the excesses of the Independent article that started the whole media discussion. Excerpt:

As is so often the case with British newspapers, the Independent article turned out to be both true and not true. It was right to say that new technology was indeed making it easier, in some cases, to read the Oxyrhynchus material, and that new discoveries were being made. But it was not right to say that the technology had just been discovered, or that it was functioning as a sort of Rosetta stone, or that so many new revelations were emerging as to herald "a second Renaissance."

"This stuff has been coming out for years now, and some of the things mentioned in the Independent story are months or years old," said Dr. James Romm, an associate professor of classics at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and the director of its classical studies program. He called the article "very much overhyped" in a field where any public attention at all is rare.

"I'd love to know who first talked to whom in order to generate such good P.R," Dr. Romm said in an interview. "There is material coming out from those authors, but it's coming out in dribs and drabs."

(Via Rogue Classicism.)

UPDATE: Just occurred to me to ask, why the qualification "British newspapers" in the first quoted sentence? Sounds pretty typical of the press to me. The New York Times is not exempt. (See also here and here.)